LITMIR.BIZ

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fire and eat them bones, beaks ‘n’all. I caught a partridge once over Kenwood and brought it home, but me dad grumbled at me and wanted to know why I’d killed such a pretty bird. We sometimes had a duck on Sunday for our dinner. We would catch ducks on a fishing line with a bit of crusty bread—bang!—the duck would take it up and we would winch him in. He would make a good dinner.

      As soon as the summer holidays started, the first thing the old man did was take all our shoes away and lock them up. We had six or seven weeks’ holiday and all that time we never wore a pair of shoes or a pair of socks. We just run round barefoot.

      Every day I would feed the chickens and the dogs and perhaps take the dogs round the block. Most mornings I would do some jobs for me mother too, like chop logs for the fire and for heating the water for washing. Sometimes I whitewashed the doorstep with the harstone brick which I dipped in water and rubbed on the step. It came up a lovely white. In Tiger Bay we had a little bit of pride, though we was poor. Everybody did their steps. Then I would find Ruddy, Joey Booth or another good mate of mine, George Tilley, who we called Cocker. Cocker was like a greyhound, taller than the rest of us and scrawny. The four of us was best mates.

      Boys never went round with gels—it was always boys on their own and gels on their own. I didn’t know anything about gels, except how to pull the bow out of their hair. Boys was boys and gels was gels. I don’t think I ever knew what me sister and her friends got up to. I weren’t interested. We spent all our time walking or fishing. We walked anywhere, for miles every day. We might go to Hampstead Heath, through Kenwood, then walk to The Spaniards and past the Spaniards Inn. That pub had something to do with Dick Turpin. Opposite there was a dungeon where Turpin was supposed to have lived. We went down there one day but it was just an old cave.

      At dinner time we would steal some vegetables from the allotments. Once Ruddy and I was out near Manor Park Road, East Finchley. It was all country out there, with loads of allotments and greenhouses. We was hungry so we went through the allotments picking a carrot here, a brussel sprout there, and we fed ourselves with little bits of vegetables. Then I spotted a big greenhouse with tomatoes growing in it.

      I says to Ruddy, ‘There’s some nice tomatoes there. We’ll have a few of them.’

      ‘Righto, Cabby,’ he says.

      They never locked the greenhouses so we just opened the door and went in. When we was inside I seen something fluttering out of the corner of me eye. It was a little wren trying to get out. Then I seen a double-barrelled gun lying on the bench. I picked it up, pulled the trigger and blew every bleeding pane of glass out the place—bang! Ruddy thought he was a dead’un, I think. The wren either flew away or got killed. Poor little bugger—they’re only as big as a sixpence. I don’t know what made me do it—I never even knew the gun was loaded. I just picked it up and pulled the trigger.

      When we wasn’t wandering round we might play football or go running on the cinder track on the heath. Or we might have a day out and walk to Hadleigh Wood, not far from Barnet, to watch the trains go by on the railway line. As they went past we would stand there in a bleeding big cloud of smoke and steam. Me mum always used to say, ‘That smoke does you the world of good, breathe it in.’

      We also liked to go to London Zoo. There was a canal along one side of the zoo and there was always loads of kids up on the bridge, diving into the water after pennies and ha’pennies thrown in by people passing by. They did it to see us dive and then they would stand and laugh. In we would go and scrabble round in the dirt to find those coppers. Nine times out of ten I went in nude, but sometimes I wore a pair of lady’s drawers tied with a drawstring at the knee.

      On one trip I was with Cocker.

      He says to me, ‘C’mon, Cabby, let’s go in the zoo and look round.’

      ‘Alright,’ I says.

      So we swam over the canal and bunked into the zoo. It was a hot day so we soon dried off. We headed straight for the monkey house. We liked watching the old monkeys racing up and down and swinging on ropes. They was lads, the monkeys—always up to something. We bought some peanuts for a penny and fed them through the bars. Then we went up to the lion house and after that to see the elephants. We never did have a ride on an elephant—it was too dear.

      On the way back from the elephants we passed some parrots.

      ‘Hang on, Sid,’ says Cocker.

      He was looking at the beautiful coloured parrots and he gave them some peanuts. Then he reached over and grabbed one of them. The old parrot squawked but in a second Cocker had it stuffed inside his jersey. We walked straight out the gates with it. A few hours later we come across a bloke called Bridges who was a penny bookmaker.

      ‘Do you want to buy a parrot?’ says Cocker.

      ‘What kind of parrot is it?’ says Bridges.

      ‘Here he is—show him, George,’ I says.

      Cocker got the parrot out and it started hollering and hooting.

      ‘I’ll give you two bob for it,’ says Bridges.

      ‘C’mon then, let’s have yer money,’ I says.

      At six o’clock at night we was always home for tea. The two-handled pan would be on the hob full of hot broth. I might have that and a lump of bread and dripping. Some-times me mum made bread pudding or rice pudding. She was an excellent cook and it was said that she once worked as a cook in the palace. There weren’t anyone in the world that could cook a rice pudding like me mum. She often said about me, ‘He would sooner have a basin of rice pudding than anything else!’ An hour later we would be back on the heath till dark.

       VIII

      There was something to do on the heath all year round. In the winter there was ice skating and tobogganing. We would go on the building sites and nick some quartering and some boarding, then take it all home and make sledges out of it. We used the steel lathes from old beds for the runners. Then, when the snow come along we would drag them all up the heath and let them out at sixpence for a half hour. Every day me, Ruddy, Joey and Cocker would be up there taking the money or sledging ourselves. The run went from the top of the hill to the bottom by the bandstand.

      When the ponds froze up and they give the all clear to skate, plenty of people would be over there. We hung round the ponds and nicked their skates when they wasn’t looking and then we either sold them or let them out. I couldn’t skate though, not even roller skate.

      In the summer we would all swim. We taught ourselves to swim, just jumped in and splashed about till we could do it. There was three ponds. The first one weren’t good for swimming really as it was full of leeches, but we took no notice, just brushed them off. Fishing weren’t allowed there but we did it anyway, and we caught roach, carp and bream. We caught them with blood worms that we fished out of the compost in the cemetery. We caught rats too by baiting the hook with food. When we caught them we held them up and killed them with a stick. Sometimes I would take a whole clutch of ducklings from the pond and rear them at home. We would even catch swans for a bit of devilment and move them onto another pond. We took their eggs for eating, but only one from each clutch cause they was a nice looking bird.

      The second pond was mainly for boating and fishing. People would take their little boats there and dogs was allowed to swim there too. Right opposite was the iron well. The water welled up red from the ground and filled up the pond. We often stopped to drink the red water. People would bring cans and bottles to fill up cause the water was good for you. They come from all over for that water.

      Me father first took me to the iron well when I had sticky, sore eyes. He would bathe them and then say, ‘Now drink some.’ Dad was a clever old boy—he knew a lot about healing and was a popular man. There was always someone coming round saying, ‘Bill, have you got this? Bill, what do you make of that?’ He had a lot to do with horses in the war so people would sometimes come up and say, ‘Bill, will you come up and see to the old

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